![]() ![]() The guy that worked on this with me is an old hand with a soldering iron and has seen a lot of vintage wiring. We cleaned all three switches with contact cleaner, after which both pickups on the outside and middle neck immediately began working. When I first got the guitar, none of the neck pickups worked at all, but all three bridge pickups did. I understand what you're saying about the pickups being wired in series, but problems in the switches can produce a situation where only one pickup per neck works I've seen this firsthand. A cursory check at the factory might not have revealed the problem another neck might have been left switched on while checking the inside neck. When I spoke to Lindy Fralin, he originally suspected the magnets, and he told me that occasionally Fender would send out a guitar, forgetting to charge the magnets. First of all, there's no reason that it couldn't have been wired incorrectly at the factory. I'm certainly no electronics whiz, but I don't follow that logic. I may actually consider something similar, because I really like the sound of these old pickups, but at this point, I'm just trying to get the guitar to sound like it was intended to sound. While the inside neck plays fine with another neck switched on, there is some loss of volume and a slight change in tone when more than one neck is active.īasil, your modification is interesting, and it would certainly produce more tonal possibilities. ![]() At this point, I'm going to give that a try. John tells me that he has seen two guitars with the symptoms mine exhibits, and that rewiring the guitar to conform with his diagram will fix this issue. I communicated with John by email, and he has very generous with information. While I don't know enough to isolate the problem, I now believe this is due to the way the guitar was originally wired, because I am reasonably certain that the original wiring has not been modified.Īfter some research, I found that John Tipka, has a wiring diagram of an early Stringmaster, and that diagram differs from my guitar. This only happens on the inside neck both other necks play fine either individually, or with another neck switched on. In other words, with only the inside neck switched on, only the bridge pickup works, but if you also switch on either of the other necks, you get sound from the neck pickup as well. However, there was apparently a short somewhere, because after much fiddling with switches, I was able to get the pickup in question to work, but only when one of the other necks is switched on. So, the neck pickup had appropriate resistance, but produced no sound, while the bridge pickup sounded fine. All sound from the inside neck was coming from the bridge pickup. ![]() My original post may not have been clear, but despite a reading of 6.5K ohms on the neck pickup, tested out of circuit, there was no sound at all from that pickup when it was in circuit. Since the original post, I've been able to make a little progress on this issue. '56 Fender Stringmaster D-8, '52 Fender Deluxe-8, Late 40's Oahu 6 Last, don't forget the capacitors and resistors that are in line with PUP's and switch. You can then unsolder the guitar wires and use the test wires with clips to test all connection possibilities and absolutely narrow the problem to the correct component. Sometime the easiest way to do this stuff is with wires with clips on the ends. If the problem moves to the "other" pickup, then I'm wrong and you have a switch problem. you could reverse the wiring to the pickups. You can continue to play detective or just sent the PUP to be "healed" by the good Mr. Occasionally they may be intermittent, but that just means that they stop and start while you wiggle the selector. almost always) switches either work or they don't. Is one present on this model? If so, is it behaving? Last is the switch. Suspicion right now has to hint at the pickup. And, you do indicate that you do have sound (not good sound, but sound) coming out of the pickup. It does NOT speak to the magnet or the health of the magnet. Measuring resistance from the pickup indicates conductance of the wires and that there is neither an open or a short in the coil. If I don't make sense, let me know and either try again, or just leave you all aloneĮngineer by trade, so let's see if I can be helpful. It's both late at night and late on this topic to reply, but here goes.
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